42 Days, 48 SaaS companies Launched, Here is What I Think I Know

Well this has been a bit of a whirlwind project. I started with a simple one-page fax app and yesterday I launched a multi-page logging application for the trucking industry with a fully clickable demo. Life has gotten pretty odd but very busy. 

I keep dancing around 2 new apps per day but cant quite seem to maintain that pace and keep my other work running smoothly. If I get up at 4am I can usually get everything launched by about 9 or 10 in the morning. This leaves me a bit of time to work out and run to the office. Usually in the evening I can spin up another one. Honestly, by that time I am pretty gassed. I assume I will get faster and streamline the app creation process to where 2-a-day is more reasonable but right now, I'm just not there yet. The complexity of my basic app has increased about 4x over some of my earlier builds. I can mitigate some of the complexity as how the programs deal with data, images, migrations, updates, and analytics is largely standardized in the lauch CLI templates it can't remove all the integration headaches. Those have to be debugged by hand. 

The biggest hurdle I have had to deal with is not coming up with new app ideas. I have a list of another 70 just waiting on me to build. No, the main issue has been tracking and analytics. You cant control what you cant measure and I have a hard time remembering what each app does and when I built it. I have already accidently rewrote an app once already. This project depends on seeing and doubling down on those apps that start giving early signals of market excitement. If I cant see the traffic and recognize the patterns I could easily miss a potential goldmine app. 

So, I started with my logging program that I use to consolidate the Stripe revenue data through its central webhook. This webhook became essential as they wouldnt allow enough to let every app have its own domainname/webhook endpoint. I have everything under a single Stripe instance but all the "products" are the apps themselves which are all coming from a different domain name. So the centralized webhook under the logger was used to consolidate the system. As a side benefit i can now easily capture all the revenue traffic and it made for a nice constantly updating dashboard showing web traffic, revenue, and other metrics. 

I have tracking cookies on both Posthog and Google Analytics but neither have proven to be particularly useful although the weakness is likely not the program but my understanding of how to set it up properly to track everything. Google Search Console has ended up being my source of truth for traffic while Stripe is the final word on revenue. I added the Search Console API to my logging software and am now logging each app indpendently. The results have been very encouraging. 

My earliest apps are starting to rank and are getting some pretty decent page rankings. This is far faster than the 90-120 days per domain name I was assuming. Every domain name is purchased and assigned to the app when it is finished. The domain is then submitted to the Google Search Console by hand, then I write a comparison HTML section in this application with links to its closest three or four competitors and a link button to the app itself. The footer of every app contains a "Powered by SimpleSaaS, LLC" hyperlink leading back here. I can only assume that the network that is being built is gaining some small amount of authority in the search and speeding the process up a bit. That is a very good thing. I am seeing a new domain getting indexed and ranked within about 37 days. My search console results are tracking it pretty closely and all of the apps are starting to gain ground about the 30 day mark. Those that start to shine early I will go back to the codebase and redesign, polish, and add a few blog post per app to hopefully get me above the fold in the search rankings.

The revenue is still small but I really wasnt counting on anything hitting until the 4th month anyway so this is just a bonus. 

I have noticed my programs are getting much more attractive and involved than ones from just 2 weeks ago. The endless repetition of building has improved my understanding of programs and flow while the attractiveness is just me getting more familiar with what works. 

I am still very much so in the grind at this point. The stress is hard but managable. We lost our key supplier on our manufacturing business and finding a replacement is going to be difficult if not impossible. We will likely have to just buy and setup our own injection molding facility but nothing the right size is available in the Industrial and manufacturing zoning we need. Its a real pain in the ass and that business may have to be shelved for a year or two until I can generate the 100-180k needed to spin up another factory. This project is easier in comparison but this isnt a picnic either. The 10 to 12 hours a day I am putting into this is making it very easy to let things slip that I shouldnt let slip. 

To Summarize, the traffic is coming faster than I was expecting. I wasnt able to notice it before today because tracking and analytics got pushed to the back burner because I was shipping new code nonstop. My manufacturing business is basically on fire and I cant do anything about it right now. So, everything is fine. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead into the breech.